Let me clarify that this isn’t really the last day of the character in-game. I will continue to play her until I can get her crafting skills maxed, at which point I’ll probably succumb to the temptation of exploits. From experience level 30 is where things go out of control; the Banish enchantment becomes available and you’ll be swimming in money because of it. Maxed skills follow shortly.
So while my playthrough is exploit-free I’m going to declare this post the final day of the series. I’ve reached the point wherein I can comfortably say that I have a good grasp of how to play the game on Master (until the next dragon rips me in half, of course). And when that so-called grasp fails there’s always the quicksave to load. Anyway, what follows are the things I learned during this experiment:
- Sneaking is still very powerful. At level 30, 1/5 is enough to let you sneak up on enemies. You can save your points for the rest of perks in the tree.
- Muffled Movement is a must. Go get it. Footwear enchanted with the Muffle spell helps a lot too.
- Assassin’s Blade continues to overpower everything.
- Joining the Dark Brotherhood is a good idea if you like playing stealthy characters. Their armor provides useful buffs.
- Conjuration is still a very useful skill. Your summons have enough health and damage to deal with most threats they’ll face. They also act as excellent distractions when you need to get foes off your back.
- Illusion continues to be very fun to play. You’ll have to get a couple of perks to make it effective though.
- Flames was a handy spell during the early levels, but not powerful enough to convince me to spend points in Destruction.
- I still use Archery a lot, but since I was avoiding exploiting it was leveling slower than usual. With that said, I often had to chip away at the health of my foes. I did this by sneaking, aiming, shooting then backing away. Given the right distance most targets won’t be able to detect your presence immediately when they get hit. Once I was hidden again I’d repeat the process.
- Since I’m wearing light armor and don’t use shields, kiting, taking cover and using terrain have been my defensive options. If everything fails I drop a summon on my foes and run like hell. Live to fight another day, I say.
That’s all I can think of for now. It’s been an enjoyable ride so far. I think future playthroughs will be started under Master difficulty.